


when m*a*s*h said suicide was painless, hal came to the conclusion that that was incorrect

by vhscassette



Category: Metal Gear Solid
Genre: Grief, Loss, M/M, Otasune, equally otasune and hal’s mourning of emma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 11:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhscassette/pseuds/vhscassette
Summary: it was hal, always just him, against the blue sky of the big shell.he never realized how much the definition of ‘alone’ could change so quickly for him.





	when m*a*s*h said suicide was painless, hal came to the conclusion that that was incorrect

The world was a tower- twelve of them, to be exact. They stood there, against the oblivious blue-green verdigris of sea, starch of summer heat. 

Otacon wiped his eyes of the sweat that dribbled down his wrinkling forehead, squinting as he glanced up at the sun. His glasses reflected slightly in the summer heat.

"I have a bad feeling."

Snake, green military disguise outfit on and ready, glanced at him as he clicked at his headset. 

"You always have a bad feeling."

Otacon looked downward to the reflecting waters below. There were waves of heat that seemed to vibrate off of the orange metal they stood on.

"Y'know, Snake," Otacon started, still staring at the water, "I don't know if God ever heard us. Do you think if he _ did, _though, he would have.. I don't know, make things change?"

Snake loaded his M9, calmly looking out to inspect for Ciphers and guards. None were in sight at the moment. "The only God we've ever had is in ourselves, Otacon. Trust in yourself like I do."

"As in you trusting _ yourself? _ Or trusting _ me?" _

Snake said nothing as he began moving towards Strut L, Otacon standing for a moment against the orange metal, white lab coat fluttering blindly in the wind. In a flash, he had turned on his camo suit and disappeared, following Snake's rapid footsteps.

* * *

"I'm not gonna let you do this without backup, Snake."

"I'm not letting you get _ involved." _

Otacon frustratedly adjusted his glasses, sweat beginning to anxiously bead on his face. Snake just continued to move on ahead, uncaring and cold. He _ knew _it was a losing battle, both on his stance and on his sturdiness, but he didn't care. "If you get hurt, I want to be hurt with you," Otacon started, his eyes not leaving the back of Snake's head. He focused on his headset's microphone.

"And what? Kill yourself along with me if it all goes haywire?" Snake snarked in anger, looking back at him with piercing green eyes.

"Yes," Otacon said, his gray eyes not flinching in the stare.

Snake grit his teeth hard, walked faster. "Get the fuck on the roof of a strut and _ stay _ there. _ Now." _

Otacon faltered at the bitter tone, the ache in his heart, the swell of uselessness in every footstep on gray cream metal. He was so alone in this world.

"If you die on me, then I want to die with you. I've already been through too much to keep going through this alone."

Snake moved forward. "You don't need to have two Ph.D's to realize that the feeling is mutual, Otacon."

A ration was tossed haphazardly into Otacon's arms, Otacon stopping in his tracks.

A guard somewhere spotted a young, unknown soldier with blonde hair in one of the break rooms.

* * *

The explosion rattled the entirety of both Shells. 

Otacon felt it shake him from the top of Strut L, nearly spilling his burner laptop out of his hands on the roof. When he looked over, saw those choking black fumes against that hot, cloudless sky, he glanced downwards to the strut letter.

Strut H-

Snake.

_ David. _

* * *

He had nearly fallen down the ladder, tripped into guards, and slipped on bird shit at _ least _ twice _ without _his camo on, all while screaming at himself at the top of his lungs. His body had never been so cold, never been so lost, never felt so afraid-- not even with seeing his dead father's face in the bathroom mirror.

The path to Strut H was completely inaccessible. He couldn't find a way. It was all fire, all pipe, all oil, all screaming-

He attempted to call Snake twice on his codec. NO RESPONSE in bright white letters.

The entire structure of Shell 2 gurgled, began tilting as the struts began to adjust from the force of the bomb. Otacon choked in a sudden windfull of smoke, the smell of burning flesh and screaming guards beginning to pierce his senses like needles.

"Snake," Otacon's throat dryly uttered, feeling hollow like a shriveled up apple skin. He was gone. He was so gone.

Call on codec.

NO RESPONSE.

Call on codec.

NO RESPONSE.

He couldn't do this by himself.

Wind blew his ash-dyed-chestnut hair skyward, tinting it with smoke and fumes.

Like a crab, Otacon tried to get closer to Strut H.

* * *

_ "Otacon?" _Snake's voice rang from a good twenty feet below. Otacon-- directly on the verge of breaking down in tears-- slammed himself over the edge of the metal crosswalk he was on and stared down into two olive eyes, thankfully blinking and filled with that utter confusion he _ always _had when Otacon did stupid shit.

Suddenly, Otacon's eyes flooded with salty tears. He threw himself back in the direction he came from, back down to the stairs he once climbed up with blurry vision, rapid footsteps coming to him--

"Oh, my _ god," _ Otacon painfully groaned as he found himself stumbling, _ throwing _himself into Snake's arms. He embraced him harshly, becoming flooded with shock when Snake held him in return.

"Jesus _ Christ, _Hal, where were you planning on going?" Snake said, confusion clear as Otacon couldn't stop trembling.

"Wherever to find you."

Those green eyes met lost gray, like a thawing forest huddled against the fog of a long lost desert.

"You thought I was dead, didn't you?" Snake said quietly, deadpan as tried to stable his partner.

Otacon looked up in disbelief. "The entire strut flew up in flames and smoke, Dave. Why the hell _ wouldn't _I have?"

Snake's eyes flickered away, Otacon noticing a very, very small and bittersweet smirk lining his face. "I thought I was toast, too, honestly. Barely managed to hop my sorry ass 'outta there."

Otacon's head was pounding, aching harshly, legs shaking.

".. Otacon?"

He fell slowly to his knees, still trying to cling onto Snake but finding his fingers slipping from Snake's canvas uniform material. Snake moved to hold him tightly at the shoulders, shaking him as he took a knee. Just as Otacon was about to go completely blank, lose himself, oh, he couldn't keep this up anymore--

_ "Otacon. _ We can't _ do _this right now. Wake up! Get a grip!" Snake barked, Otacon able to tell the genuine, sharp call of desperation in his tone. Otacon's whole body felt rubbery to himself, numb, cold, so afraid for everything that the future has ever held.

This, however, was a time that Otacon's logic could take the helm; if _ Snake _ needed him to do something, needed _ anything, _then Christ, he'd be the man to do it. 

Without realizing it, though, Otacon felt a truth come spilling out of his throat.

"I need you, David."

The white noise of fire, guns, and sea quietly trailed his words. He couldn't stop the tumbling of words coming out of his mouth, his mind, his heart.

"I need you. I need you to live."

Tears began welling up in his eyes, his voice swallowing rocks as he tried to avoid sobbing. He buried his face in Snake's chest. Snake was silent.

".. Because _ if _ you were to disappear, I just.. I don't know what I'd do, Snake. --And I _ know _ that I can't do anything about it. I never will be. My bad feelings, my worries, everything I've ever done in my life follows me like a plague of cicadas-- always crying, always reminding me of where I've failed or where I _ can. _I've already nearly lost you once already."

Otacon kept his eyes closed in the soft, gentle warmth of Snake's clothed collarbone. It smelled sweaty, bloody, of some laundry detergent they never had enough of, of him.

"Every day I'm alive, you remind me that I have a _ pulse, _ Dave. I'm sick of the sea. I'm sick of dying. I'm sick of being split from the ones I love, and I love you, David."

Snake suddenly dug into Otacon's coat pocket, grabbing the camo device. A slow wave of fear rose up in him before Snake put his hand and Otacon's on the device, sharing the technology.

"Turn the camo on."

Otacon followed the instructions and felt warm, chapped lips and a stubbled face on his own mere seconds later.

* * *

When Emma was a little girl, Otacon remembered that they had read Rumplestiltskin together. In their loud, happy voices, they had played pretend-- so often did Emma play herself as the sunflower-colored thread-weaver. 

Emma had weaved her loss in gold thread, tangling itself in something she had no comprehension of, and leaving it to be snipped as carelessly as a weed in grass. Her love, her failure, the ache of her own missing brother-- she could have knit a sweater with her silk, and yet Hal found himself staring at the scissors that had cut her life short.

On the metal floor, slowly becoming slick with her blood, Emma's body began loosening in Hal's arms.

Wanting to be seen as a woman, as his sister, as _ Emma- _

When Hal left Shadow Moses, his footsteps in the deep Alaskan snow drifts were caught not by soldiers, but by her. 

Her breaths were becoming uneven, crackling, her chest beginning to fail her.

When Hal was searching for information that lead to Snake’s near-death, his information was not relayed by agents, but by her.

Emma, her soft, dying eyes just as fluttery as he remembered them from when she nearly drowned as a child, closed.

But when Emma searched for Hal in the gusty orange sky of Strut 2’s oil fences, he was nowhere to be seen.

In the end, she had died— died underneath that violet, bluesoft sky that she loved so much.

Hal knew this.

Hal knew this, and as he looked down into those empty, light eyes, he felt like curtains were closing in on his last remaining memory of his childhood.

Emma, in the part of that mind still alive and not bleeding, not dead, waved to him goodbye.

The curtains closed. Hal cried.


End file.
